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I wrote this in November 2005, and sadly it is more timely now in 2012.

Anti-semitism is an incurable social disease. How tragic that it is rampant in American universities.

Local attorney Gil Stein wrote a letter to the Sentinel in 2005 saying that anti-semitism was alive and well at UCSC and that anti-semitism was increasing on college campuses throughout the Country.

How is this possible in institutions of higher learning where parents of college students pay as much as $100,000 for four years so their children can become educated, fair-thinking members of society?

Because Gil Stein’s letter is very worrisome, I will repeat portions of it along with my own thoughts so that many others in this area can be made aware of this ugly situation, which, if not confronted, will escalate just as it did in Germany in the early 1930s when I lived through it and lost members of my own family.

Please listen, then register your outrage with the local Chancellor and those irresponsible members of the faculty who say nothing about this very noticeable disagreeable issue.

Pro-Palestinian speakers receive University sponsorship while pro-Israel speakers are denied sponsorship by those same departments.

The University promotes diversity, but not diversity with which they disagree. This policy of looking the other way when certain speakers spout racist venom needs to stop.

Academic freedom should not be a cover for bigotry. All campuses should also be open to speakers who do not represent the views of the “politically correct”.

I say shame on the biased and gutless faculty and leaders who encourage prejudice to fester in places of higher learning. Remember – when good people remain silent and do nothing, bad things happen and evil takes hold. It is called the Sin of Omission.

Our publically financed universities must no longer become institutions of hate and selective discrimination.

And now, let’s fast forward to 2012 –

Despite the fact that anti-semitism remains an incurable social disease – all fair-thinking people must speak out and protest such despicable actions.

Denying that there ever was a Holocaust – which is really left out of textbooks in Europe at this time, does not deny that barbarism.

That is the height of shame and cowardous. Good people must denounce it instead of denying its existence.

I just learned about the meaning of the flag-draped coffin. Maybe some of you knew this, but some may not.

Those who think that America is an arrogant nation should really re-consider that thought. Our Founding Fathers used God's Words and teachings to establish our Great Nation.

Be proud of the Country we live in, and even more proud of those who serve to protect our “God given” rights and freedoms. Here is how to understand the flag that is laid upon the coffin and is surrendered to so many widows and widowers:

Do you know that at military funerals, the 21-gun salute stands for the sum of the numbers in the year 1776?

Have you ever noticed the Honor Guard pays meticulous attention to correctly folding the USA flag 13 times? You probably thought it was to symbolize the original 13 colonies, but we learn something new every day!

The 1st fold is a symbol of life. The 2nd fold is a symbol of the belief in eternal life.The 3rd fold is in honor and remembrance of the Veterans departing the ranks who gave a portion of their lives for the defense of our Country.The 4th fold represents the weaker nature, for as American citizens trusting in God, it is to Him we turn in times of peace as well as in time of war.The 5th fold is a tribute to our Country in dealing with other countries. The 6th fold is for where people's hearts lie. It is with their hearts that they pledge allegiance to the flag of the USA, and the Republic for which it stands.

The 7th fold is a tribute to its Armed Forces, for it is through the Armed Forces that they protect their Country and their flag against all her enemies.

The 8th fold is a tribute to the one who entered into the valley of the shadow of death.

The 9th fold is a tribute to womanhood, and Mothers. For it has been through their faith, their love, loyalty, and devotion that has made this Country so great. The 10th fold is a tribute to the father, for he, too, has given his sons and daughters for the defense of their Country. The 11th fold represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon, and glorifies in the Hebrews’ eyes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.The 12th fold represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in the Christians' eyes, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And finally, the 13th fold, or when the flag is completely folded, the stars are uppermost reminding the recipient of their Nation’s motto “In God We Trust”.

Share this with the children you love and all others who love what is referred to, the symbol of Liberty and Freedom. One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. Our Soldiers have preserved your right to make this choice!

It may be delinquent for our government to not recognize our military to the extent that it deserves by not giving it and its families higher wages.

Able-bodied young men are urged to join the military and put themselves in harm’s way, but they may receive low wages and if they have families their wages may also be low compared to those persons working at desk in our now large Obama government.

When Obama used the first stimulus billions in his government to reward his buddies for helping him become President by enlarging our government unnecessarily, that was a total waste – now we have further expenses and still no new real jobs.

Now we see too many of our soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan crippled (why are we fighting so far from home?).

Many return without arms or legs with permanent disabilities and struggle financially and it does not appear that our government offers much help simply because our TV’s are filled with requests for We the People to help our Veterans and continue doing so indefinitely.

To a point, We the People should be generous, but when does our government step in and also help?

For many years, I have chosen to help the Paralyzed Veterans – but lately I have been receiving every day in the mail at least 30 requests for help from Veterans associations and other needy charities.

Because of these abundant requests so suddenly, I am somewhat irritated to learn that my name and the names of other charitable Americans have been sold to many other organizations asking for help. And, that is a violation of our privacy!

It may be way past time for Obama and our federal government to step up to the plate and also help all of our needy soldiers and their families.

It is the moral responsibility of the government who sent our men into war, to take care of them and their families indefinitely if necessary – and if private citizens would like to help out, that would be compassionate, but our government must be the one responsible entity.

And finally, why can’t we think carefully before we allow ourselves to go to war with other countries? Can’t we see that nobody wins in wars except the companies who create the guns and ammunition? Otherwise, every side loses.

This bewilders me that I have lived so long, but never heard of the Paradoxical Commandments until recently when my friend Marcia told me about them.

Here’s the story – evidently the Paradoxical Commandments were written by an 18-year-old named Kent Keith, a freshman at Harvard in 1968. He is probably 60 years old now. The Commandments were later found posted on Mother Teresa’s wall in India.

One wonders how an 18-year-old could have the wisdom and depth of understanding of human nature to be so right-on and so humanly generous as Kent Keith was to come up with those mature thoughts. It is like finding meaning in a crazy world, and how many of us humans achieve such wisdom? I wonder, also, how can an 18-year-old have become so disenchanted so early in his life? That is a paradox, too. And, maybe there was a little bit of paranoia in him, also. Here are the Paradoxical Commandments:

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered – Love them anyway.If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives – Do good anyway.If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies – Succeed anyway.The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow – Do good anyway.Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable – Be honest and frank anyway.The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds – Think big anyway.People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs – Fight for a few underdogs anyway.What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight – Build anyway.People really need help, but may attack you if you do help them – Help people anyway.

And finally –

Give the world the best you have and you will get kicked in the teeth – Give the world the best you have anyway.

So much for the Paradoxical Commandments.

And now it is chuckle time –

A Rabbi & a Priest in the same town were friends. They met once a week to go bicycling together. One day while the Priest was waiting in the usual place, the Rabbi came but without his bicycle. He told his friend the Priest that it was not where he usually put it so it was probably stolen.

The Priest paused a moment & then said to the Rabbi “I have an idea. This coming Friday night when you deliver your sermon, why don’t you make your subject the Ten Commandments, and when you get to the part where it says ‘Thou shalt not steal’, perhaps the thief will be listening and be remorseful and return your bike.” So the following week when it was time for the buddies to meet, the Rabbi arrived with his bike. Elated, the Priest said “See, I told you that when you would read the Ten Commandments that say ‘Thou shalt not steal’ it would work and you would get your bicycle back, and you did.” The Rabbi replied “Well, it was not exactly that way. I did give my sermon, but when I came to the part that says ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’, I remembered where I left my bike.” For KSCO, this is Kay Zwerling.

In 1979, my husband and I were fortunate enough to be in China exactly when our two governments agreed to trade with each other. The Chinese people were dancing in the streets. I wondered how all this would play out. The agrarian country was now becoming a world trader. Let’s fast forward to 2011.

In our eagerness to trade with China, it became – and still is – lopsided. It is called free trade where only one side benefits.

Along the way, somehow we seduced ourselves into giving up our own industries which had kept us independent. We thought perhaps that being a service-oriented society would be alright.

The U.S. has really been living in a fools’ paradise on a phony economy. Now we are world dependent. We have helped China to become so wealthy that she owns us, because most of her profits are in billions and are invested in our nation.

A long time ago I read in Barron’s, the financial periodical, something that is very compelling. Listen… We have not been through anything like what we are going through now – probably for more than 20 years – we have been able to convince the world lately to lend us and to provide us with goods that we do not produce anymore and that we cannot afford to pay for. And now the problem is big, especially since the real estate bubble.

We borrowed so much money from abroad that our trade deficits are now enormous, and our industrial base has been allowed to decay for so long that we can only survive in this economy thanks to the charity of the rest of the world.

Perhaps we must resurrect what worked for us before – that is, our own industries and reject our debt dependency on other nations. That is the path our Forefathers vigorously admonished us to take when our nation was created. We must, however, factor in that the world has changed. Once the world had workers in the millions. Now, with China and India in the world market, the global workforce is in the billions (with a B), so the inflation of workers creates resentment and competition. The stage is set for the inevitable confrontation of China and India vs. the U.S. and Europe, and how that situation will play out remains to be seen.

As we think about China and how she has so rapidly become a world presence, we may remember Napoleon’s famous description “Let China sleep for when she awakens she will shake the world.”

Today, China is not only awake, but because of her enormous population, she is – or will become – arguably the greatest force in the world. So, despite what our sophisticated Wall Street types have to say, China is getting richer and stronger, and we are becoming weaker. Ironically, China’s funds are so invested in America that if she removes those possible billions and trades them into Euros our economy may collapse. But, the Pandora’s box is now open and it will never close.

Why did we allow this inequity to happen? Wouldn’t fair trade have been better than free trade?

Fair trade means that I give you 50% and you give me back 50%.

Recently I read a most intriguing article with regard to China, who is much more aggressive and aware than we are about acquiring the world’s dwindling raw materials. China is now engaged in Africa, specifically the sub-Saharan countries like Mozambique, which supplies lumber, and Zambia, which supplies copper, and the Condo has a wide range of minerals, and equatorial Guinea has oil. China, at a frantic pace, is swooping up the copper, timber, natural gas, zinc, cobalt, and you name it.

Because China can see that in the foreseeable future – factoring in the recent luxury needs of China and India, plus all of Europe, Asia, and the United States – there will be a shortage of these raw materials. The awakening giant is now buying up everything that the poor sub-Saharan countries will willingly sell her.

Evidently we are either too timid, not looking ahead, asleep at the wheel, or maybe too obsessed with corrupt American politics – well, in fact, our Country is involved in the sub-Saharan countries, but not in the aggressive way that China is.

We should wisely remember the forgotten word of Thomas Malthus who said some two centuries ago “The power of population is infinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for all mankind.” In other words, eventually there may not be enough of the raw materials to serve all mankind. Like China, shouldn’t we be more aggressive about obtaining the raw materials while they are still available?

This commentary is in my book. I recorded it in the fall of 2010. It is time for a little sexy humor.

Breaking news: Suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike shortly.

They are in dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the Afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Quaeda’s management have so far failed to produce any agreement.

The unrest began last week when Al Quaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death would be cut by 25% this month from 72 to only 60.

The rationale for the cut was the increase in recent years of the number of suicide bombings and a subsequent shortage of virgins in the Afterlife.

General Secretary Abdul Amir told the press “Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of Jihad. We do not ask for much in return, but to be treated like this by management is a kick in the teeth.”

Mr. Amir accepted the limited availability of virgins, but pointed out that the cut-back was expected to be borne entirely by the workforce and not by the management.

Last Christmas Abu Hanza alone was awarded a bonus of 250,000 virgins, complained Amir, and you can be sure they will all be pretty ones. How can Al Quaeda afford that for members of the management but not even 72 for the people who do the real work?

Al Quaeda Chief Executive Osama Bin Laden explained “We sympathize with our workers’ concerns, but Al Quaeda is simply not in the position to meet their demands.”

Bin Laden defended management bonuses by claiming these were necessary to attract good fanatical clerics. “How am I supposed to attract the best people if I can’t compete with the private sector?”

Talks broke down this morning after management’s last ditch proposal of a virgin sharing scheme which was rejected outright after a failure to agree on allocation quotas. Certain virgins sign up to be available in the Afterlife to accommodate the honored suicide bombers. One virgin who refused to be named was quoted as saying “I will be compromised if I am agreeing to anything like that….. it is just too much to swallow.” Unless some sort of an agreement is reached, suicide bombers will stop the explosives shortly.

The entire Australian continent stated that this situation would not affect their operations because there are no virgins in that area anyway.

Late news: Apparently the drop in the number of suicide bombings has been put down the emergence of Susan Boyle – and now that bombers know what a virgin looks like, they are not so keen to go to Paradise.

We Americans pride ourselves upon being fair-minded, logical, and quite intelligent. For the most part, all of those positive factors are true.

However, in one glaring area, our logic is incongruously ridiculous. While we all agree that the Rule of Law must prevail if a Country is to be taken seriously – please explain to me why we tolerate sanctuary cities, also known as rule-breaking American cities.

As of now, there are at least 114 American cities which call themselves sanctuaries, all of which break our laws every day, and nobody says Boo.

Those law-breaking cities in our U.S. choose to protect people who enter our Country illegally, and they condone the law-breaking by not allowing our police to send them back to their own countries.

Note: There are many people from foreign countries eager to come to America legally. Sometimes they wait on line for five years to come here legally. And, that way they are welcome.

This situation makes a farce of all our laws, which are blatantly broken, and it is now being considered for illegals to be given free tuition to our universities, while legals must pay. Our Congress is also considering giving Social Security benefits to illegals but not to legals, with neither class having put in a penny.

This behavior is beyond insane, and there are really 114 sanctuary cities as of now. I suspect there are many many more, including New York, San Francisco, and many others, even Santa Cruz is also a sanctuary city.

If many more U.S. cities become sanctuaries, our Rules of Law will no longer exist and we will no longer have a viable Country.

I say kudos to Arizona for closing her borders to keep out illegals, and shame on Obama for slapping a lawsuit on Arizona’s Governor who was merely trying to save what is left of our Country.